Ruth Rendell - The Bridesmaid

Not daring to promise that they could get it for her, still less instal it free of extra charge, Philip said he had the matter in hand and she would hear from him personally in a day or two.

“Or a week or two,” said Pearl nastily!

The rain had stopped. Water lay across the roadway in pools, which the sun turned into blazing mirrors. You could see the steam rising. Philip drove down the road and round the corner, heading for where Arnham lived. His wheels made fountains of water splash up, the sun was in his eyes, and if he hadn’t slowed to pull the visor down, he might have killed the running cat or the little dog which came rushing across the road in pursuit of it. As it was, swerving, braking as hard as he could with his foot slammed onto the floor of the car, skidding on the wet surface, his nearside wing must have struck the dog a glancing blow. It yelped and rolled over.

It was a Sealyham, white and fluffy. Philip picked it up. He didn’t think it was hurt, for now that he held it, feeling its body for broken bones or painful areas, it reacted by a rapturous licking of his face. Arnham’s wife or girl friend had come down the steps and was standing at the gate. She looked older than when he had last seen her, and thinner, but on previous occasions he had only seen her through glass. Out here in the sunshine she looked thin and ugly and middle-aged.

“He ran straight out in front of me,” Philip said. “I don’t think he’s come to any harm.”

She said coldly, “I suppose you were going too fast.”

“I don’t think so.” He was getting rather tired of being accused of things of which he wasn’t guilty. “I was driving at about twenty miles an hour because of the wet road. Here, you’d better take him.”

“He’s not my dog. What made you think he was mine?”

What had? The fact that she and she alone had come out? Or because he somehow connected Arnham with a dog? That had been a Scottie, he remembered, that had been Senta’s invention. Arnham disliked dogs, had never had a dog.

“I heard your brakes,” she said. “I came out to see what was going on.” She went back up the steps and into the house and closed the door.

Philip, in whose arms the Sealyham was now comfortably snuggled, read the tag on its collar which proclaimed it to be Whisky, the property of H. Spicer, who lived three houses down from Mrs. Ripple. He carried the dog home and was offered a five-pound note as reward, which he refused.

But returning to his car, he thought what confusion deception causes, what a muddle in the mind, so that facts are mixed up with truth and truth distorted. Because of what Senta had said he had made certain assumptions based on her story. The story was proven false but the assumptions still held.

He got into the car and glanced up at the house again as he switched on the ignition. All you have to hang on to, he told himself, is that Arnham lives there and Arnham is alive. Now forget everything else and be happy.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“I just wonder if maybe she’s only been getting money together and saving it up. What do you think? I mean she’s unemployed and likely to go on being and she’s no skills, poor little love, and maybe she thought if she got a nice bit of money behind her … ? I don’t know. Am I being silly?”

Philip had brought himself to tell his mother what had happened on the evening he had followed Cheryl, only to find his story not believed. Christine was aware that Cheryl pilfered from the members of her own family and had learned not to leave sums of money about the house unless she expected to lose them. But that she would steal from a shop was too much for her mother to digest. Philip only thought he had witnessed a theft. What he had really seen was Cheryl’s retrieval of her own property that she had somehow left behind there earlier that day.

“It wasn’t very nice of you to suspect your own sister of something like that.” This was the nearest she would ever get to a reproach, and her tone was gentle rather than reproving.

Philip could tell there was no point in arguing. “All right. Perhaps it wasn’t. But if you know she steals from you, why does she?”

But Cheryl’s purpose in stealing was beyond her. It was as if Christine’s mind stopped short at the stealing itself, giving no thought to what Cheryl stole/or Philip’s suggestion that it might be for drink or drugs made her stare. Drugs were something that happened to other people’s children. Besides, she had seen Cheryl in the bath only two days before and there had been no needle marks on her thighs or upper arms.

“Are you sure you’d have noticed if there had been?”

Christine thought she would have. She would have known if Cheryl drank. While they were away on holiday, other guests in the small private hotel they had stayed in had missed sums of money. The police had been called in, but Cheryl hadn’t even been questioned. Christine seemed to think this must imply her innocence. Stealing from one’s own mother was different, hardly stealing at all really, one had a sort of half right to it already.

“The unemployment benefit she gets doesn’t amount to much, you know, Phil.” She was pleading for her daughter with a kind of wide-eyed piteousness, as if Philip were determined on condemning her. “I’ll tell you what,” she said, “I’ll speak to my friend that’s the social worker, the one who works with teenagers.”

That would be Audrey. Inwardly Philip reproached himself for finding it hard to believe his mother could know anyone with that sort of job, counted among her friends someone in a responsible caring position. He said firmly, “That might be a very good idea. And you can explain what I saw. I did see it and it was stealing. It isn’t going to help anyone to pretend otherwise.”

That evening he had resolved to stay at home with her, but Christine seemed anxious for him to go out. He could tell it wasn’t just selflessness. She really wanted the house to herself. It made him wonder if Arnham had fulfilled his promise to phone her, if he had made a reappearance in her life and was due this evening. Philip smiled to himself when he thought of Arnham in this house, talking to Christine, perhaps telling her of his loss of Flora, while all the time the statue was upstairs, no more than a few feet above their heads.

Thinking like this made him look at Flora, standing there in the recesses of the cupboard. Senta’s face looked out at him from the shadows and the way the soft vague evening sunlight fell on it gave the illusion of a smile. Philip couldn’t resist putting out a finger to touch one cool marble cheek and then stroking it lightly with the back of his hand. Had he stolen Flora? Was he then as much a thief as Cheryl? Something, some unlooked-for intuition, brought him to Cheryl’s bedroom door. He hadn’t been into the room or even seen inside it since the day Fee had found the crumpled bridesmaid’s dress lying on the wardrobe floor. Now he opened the door, surprised to find it unlocked, and stepped inside.

Three transistor radios, a portable television with a screen the size of a playing card, a tape player, two hair dryers, some kitchen thing, a food processor probably, other electrical equipment—it was all stacked on top of a chest of drawers, and Philip knew at once it had been stolen. One of the radios still had a scarlet band of some sort of sticky tape round it. He wondered how she had managed to take these large bulky objects without being detected. Ingenuity born of despair and desperation, he thought. This store of stolen goods was like someone else’s savings or investments, waiting to be turned into cash—for what?

His sister was a criminal, but he couldn’t see what there was to be done about it. A fatalistic acceptance was all that was possible now. Appealing to the police or the social services would lead to Cheryl’s being charged with theft, and because she was his sister, he couldn’t give her away to some outside authority. He could only hope for the best, pin his faith to some help or advice coming from the social worker friend of Christine’s. He closed the bedroom door behind him, knowing he would never go in there again.